Close Your Eyes and Count To Ten
by blueink3
Summary: Getting shot is not unlike getting stabbed but the roaring in his ears is too distracting for him to make a thorough comparison.


_Close Your Eyes and Count To Ten_

Getting shot is not unlike getting stabbed but the roaring in his ears is too distracting for him to make a thorough comparison.

Pale blue eyes roll around in their sockets, fighting against the urge to slide tightly shut and never open again. It's tempting, really it is. His lids feel heavy and his breathing is sluggish and it would be so much easier to just take a brief nap. Just for a while.

He licks his lips because they feel dry, but then his cheeks are wet and he briefly wonders when that happened. Distantly, he thinks Snow is screaming, but it's all just background noise compared to the ragged breaths that seem to rattle every bone in his body.

He's managed to forget how much a near-fatal wound hurts.

It was a poor shot, made from fifteen feet away or so. Still, David is thanking his lucky stars even as he grits his teeth because two inches to the right and Storybrooke would be looking for a new deputy.

The thought makes him think of Emma. His sheriff. His daughter. She's not with him because the man they had been pursuing led them to a fork in the road. He went left and she went right. Thank _God _she went right.

He manages to press his hand into his shoulder even as a guttural groan escapes his lips. His voice is broken and his throat is burning, but he presses harder even as blood seeps out between his fingers.

"David!"

He blinks once, twice, and tries to focus on his wife's voice. It's far too loud and jarring, yet he clings to it like one would a buoy in a storm.

He can't quite muster up enough energy to reply, but he manages another groan even as the world starts to go a little hazy around the edges. Without even looking, he knows the ground around him has been stained red…

"David!"

… He wishes he could spare his wife this.

"Oh God, oh God, David, what did you do?"

He feels a hand, a hand he knows every freckle and line of, press on his chest and he manages to keep his eyes open long enough to see her kneeling over him with a look of terror he hasn't seen since the day his daughter was born.

"You found me," he mutters as she chokes out a sob. He lifts a surprisingly steady hand to Snow's cheek, only realizing after he leaves a red smear that it was the hand he had been pressing down on his wound.

"Emma!" Snow turns and screams before returning her attention to him. "Don't you do this to me again. Don't you leave me."

"Never," he replies, licking his lips and swallowing past his thick throat.

His wife's palm is warm on his cheek despite the cool air and he thinks that's odd, because she's always had cold hands. He feels her searching his pockets and pulling out his cell phone, shakily dialing numbers as she tries to keep the blood inside his body from spilling out. His eyes slip shut as he listens. He could have sworn she had been just beside him, but she sounds so far away.

"Charming, no!"

He jolts, eyes opening to find Snow's frantic face inches from his own.

"Eyes open," she instructs, even as a tear falls from her cheek to his.

He feels oddly calm as his wife returns to the phone call, detailing what happened and where they are. He is Prince Charming. He lives for danger and Snow White, and both things are startlingly present in this moment. Breathe in. Breathe out. The pain can't last forever.

Snow practically tosses the phone in favor of hanging up as she waves to someone just outside of his peripheral vision.

"David!"

Oh,_ Emma. _His eyes close, because if couldn't spare his wife this, then he definitely wanted to spare his daughter. Surely fate had to give him a break somewhere.

"Jesus Christ, what happened?" she asks as she drops to her knees and unwinds her scarf from her neck.

"Wandered into a bullet, apparently," he replies, going for levity but failing when he receives two sets of watery glares in return.

Emma pushes her scarf into his shoulder and the resulting pain slams David's body back to earth, prying a strangled grunt from his throat that is almost inhuman.

"Careful," he slurs, vision going spotty as he watches his blood stain the green material red.

"It's too much," Snow whispers to Emma and even David, who always considered himself to be a glass half full kinda guy, can admit that his odds aren't looking too good.

"The ambulance should be here in a minute," Emma responds, but even her normal confidence is shaken. She's pale and drawn and, sitting side-by-side with Snow, never more like her mother.

David smiles as he stares at them. The women in his life. Emma still has her hand on his wound and Snow is cupping his cheek in her palm. The hands that aren't touching him are clasped to each other.

This is how it should be. He left his wife in a bedroom to put his daughter in a wardrobe, knowing it was probably the last time he would see either. The feeling is as familiar as yesterday and he puts his hand on top of their clasped palms. Yes, this is how it should be.

"Why are you smiling?"

"You're beautiful," he whispers, unsteady gaze trying to catch them both.

"Don't do that," Emma snaps. "Don't you dare start saying goodbye."

It's surprising coming from her. He expected resistance from Snow, but Emma looks about as held together as a scotch-taped glass figurine.

Snow chokes back a sob as she bends down and presses her nose to his chest, inhaling deeply. "Don't go. Please don't go."

Half of his body is just about useless, but the hand that still does work cups the back of her head and runs sticky fingers through her cropped hair. Short or long, he's loved every midnight black strand.

A tear runs down his daughter's cheek, whose features are as light as Snow's are dark. Sirens can be heard in the distance and the flash of the lights dance on her pale face.

"Hang on, Dad. They're coming," she whispers and it's that three-letter word that keeps his senses intact for just that much longer.

"Kay," he replies, even as he closes his eyes, drowning in the fatigue that's rapidly taking control of his body. As a shepherd and a Prince, his medical knowledge is rudimentary at best, but even _he_ knows that this is a bad sign. He shouldn't be closing his eyes; he should be fighting to stay awake, but he's losing blood too quickly and he has a piece of metal inside of him and quite frankly, he thinks that getting stabbed might actually have been preferable.

Snow, it seems, has other plans. She slaps David across the face, hard, and then grabs him by the chin and forces their eyes to lock. "Charming," she says as her voice breaks. "Listen to me. There is an ambulance here, and you're going to the hospital and Dr. Whale is going to get this damn thing out of you and you're going to have one more scar for me to memorize, and you are going to live so I don't have to attempt to do so without you. Do you understand?"

David blinks owlishly, before nodding his head slowly, taking just that long to actually process her words. Apparently, this is not a good enough answer.

"Do you understand me?"

"Yes," he manages through a smile. His wife is stubborn but damn, if she's not the best thing to ever happen to him. However, his love for her is not enough to overpower the drowning feeling that is rapidly overwhelming him and his eyelids slide shut once again. Emma isn't having any of it, though, and jerks David's chin roughly.

"Prince fucking Charming." Her voice is absolutely wrecked and her hand is still pushing a blood-drenched scarf into his bullet wound. Her eyes are manic and bright, and she looks so completely frightened that David forces his eyes open wide and clings on tight to every word. "If you do something as idiotically stupid as die on me tonight, I will never forgive you."

With a groan, he moves the arm on his injured side and places his hand atop Emma's where it rests on his chest, clinging tight to both wife and daughter despite the pain, because letting go of either of them in these, the moments which could be his last, is just not an option.

A set of medics appear on his other side, both muttering quick "Your Highnesses," before forcefully removing Emma and Snow's hands so they can access his wound properly. Snow, however, doesn't go far and lets her now-bloody finger trace the line of his jaw.

The muscle in his temple throbs as he tries to keep the pain from overwhelming him; the simple act of removing Emma's scarf has him seeing stars. It's Snow, however, that saves him, as she always does. She leans down and lets her nose brush the shell of his ear as she hums the lullaby they had picked out for Emma's mobile to play. It's faint and a little off-key but it's enough to keep him tethered to the here and now.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Emma is actually crying and the sight unnerves him more than he thinks it should. Snow may be humming in his ear, but Emma is gripping tight to the sleeve of his jacket, not even letting go as the medics strap him to the stretcher.

Frankly, it's beginning to scare David. Badly. Emma's always been the strong one and, of their family, the one most likely to hold it together, himself included. To see her looking so broken and frightened is making him reassess just how bad off he is.

And then, a truly terrifying thought slices through him: what if this really is goodbye?

Snow is openly sobbing now as he's wheeled to the waiting ambulance and his conscious' fight is growing more and more sluggish. He needs to close his eyes. Just for a bit. But he can't even do that because Emma looks like she's choking on words and air, and his paternal instinct is telling him to help her but he's so tired he can barely breathe. Her mouth opens and shuts a few more times before she swoops down and presses a kiss to his forehead. He's too shocked to even tell her it'll be okay, as hollow as those words sound, even to himself.

"I love you," spills out of Emma's mouth and those three words cause his lips to part in utter astonishment. It seems to take a moment for Emma to realize what she's said, and when she does, she follows it up with a shaky laugh. "Don't do anything stupid. I meant what I said."

"I know," he whispers as he's loaded into the back of the truck.

"I'll follow in the patrol car," he hears Emma say before Snow's face appears above him once more. David tries to reach for her and finds his hand is far too heavy.

"I love you," Snow echoes.

"Love," he repeats.

"Charming." Snow shakes him and it's only then that he realizes he's closed his eyes. The pain that comes from her jostling is welcome, since it's the first thing his overly numbed body has felt in a few minutes.

"Too," he finishes. "Love you t – "

Which is precisely the moment he goes into cardiac arrest.

The last thing he hears is Snow's frantic shout of his name, but for once, it's not enough to pull him from the black.

xxxxx

Something is beeping.

It's not loud, but it's steady enough to be annoying, and as he blinks an eye open, the fluorescent lights on the ceiling make him thoroughly wish he was still knocked out.

He hurts everywhere; the kind of pain he imagines he would feel if he had tumbled off the mountain after he fought the dragon and hit every rock on the way down.

He hears a groan and it takes him a minute to realize the noise came from his own mouth. He tries to turn his head to the left only to discover that his body is a bit slow to comply with the orders his brain is handing out. Only then does he realize he's not the only one in the room.

The chairs on either side of his bed are occupied: Emma is curled up like a cat to his left and Snow's head is propped up on her hand to his right. Even the bed feels smaller than it should be and that's probably because there's a person balled up at the foot of it. Henry seems to be using his legs as a pillow as his face is pressed into the blanket.

His family looks tired, but together and _here _and, in this moment, that's all he can hope for. He drinks in the sight of them, of Emma's hair falling over her face, of Henry holding onto his hospital blanket like a stuffed animal, and of Snow whose sleep is anything but restful. Her brow is creased and her body twitches and Charming wants nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and save her from herself.

Finally, he takes a self-inventory and finds an IV disappearing into his hand, bandages around both his shoulder for his wound, and his chest for the burn marks leftover from the AED paddles. Nothing like stinging burns to remind you that your heart stopped.

Speaking of which… he glances at Snow again and just stares, studying her beauty. She's an open book he could get lost in and, yes he may be a little drugged up at the moment, but she is truly the most breathtaking thing he's ever seen.

"Gramps?"

David shifts his attention to Henry, who's staring up at him with wide brown eyes.

"Are you okay?" the boy quietly asks. He looks scared to even touch David, lest he break right before his very eyes, but David merely holds out his hand and ushers the boy closer to the head of the bed.

"Almost good as new," he replies.

"Mom said you got shot."

David nods. "I did."

Henry is staring at the bandage that disappears beneath his hospital gown. "But you're okay?"

David leans down and presses a kiss to Henry's soft hair. "Just fine."

"A new scar to add to the collection?"

"Exactly."

Henry rests his head gently against David's good shoulder for a moment and David just relishes the feel of his grandson in his arms. After a few minutes, Henry sits forward and slides off the bed.

"Where're you going, kid?"

"Dr. Whale wanted us to tell him the second you woke up. But I don't want to wake Mom or Grandma," he replies, sounding far beyond his eleven years.

"Okay," David whispers. "Don't go far."

"You got it, Gramps."

David follows him until the door shuts behind the boy and only then does he realize he's being watched. Snow has woken up and is staring at him like it's the first time. In fact, she has that same wistful look on her face and he can almost hear her saying, _Nah, still like Charming better_.

They continue to stare at each other, silently saying all they can't voice and more. Finally, Snow stands and makes her way over to him on shaky legs, before leaning heavily on the bed and placing a fierce kiss on his lips.

"Don't you ever,_ ever_ do that to me again," she breathes against his mouth.

"I'll try," he whispers, seeking her lips out again.

"You were so pale…" a tear slips from her eye and he catches it with his thumb before it reaches her chin.

"But I'm here now," he says as he cups her face in his hands, ignoring the pain. "I'm here now."

She nods and leans down to kiss him once more, before resting her ear on his chest and memorizing his heartbeat. "You smell good," he murmurs and she stands back up with a giggle.

"I'm covered in blood, sweat, and dirt. Now I _know _you're drugged up."

He smiles. "Just a bit. But I still think you smell good." But now that he gets a good look at her, he realizes that half of her blue shirt is caked in dried blood – _his _dried blood – and it hits home just how much he lost. You don't realize how much blood is in the human body until it spills out around you.

"It was close, wasn't it."

Snow swallows hard and nods, picking at the blanket. "Whale… " she inhales and fortifies herself, "Whale wasn't sure he could save you. It was touch and go for a bit." She runs her fingers through his hair, tracing his scalp gently with her nails. "I've had to hold your lifeless body in my arms far too many times. I can't take it again."

Something inside of him breaks, because he knows the feeling. He knows what it is to look down on the person you love and know that their heart is still in their chest. That blood does not pump through their veins and breath does not fill their lungs. He knows what Snow's coffin looks like, which is more than he ever wanted to know of her death.

"C'mere." He opens his arms and scoots over as far as his IV will allow, so his wife can climb into bed next to him. Their daughter still sleeps fitfully in the chair, and David can't help but think of her pleading demand:

"_If you do something as idiotically stupid as die on me tonight, I will never forgive you." _

He thinks of Emma, and of Henry, and of how this was almost too much for his fragile family to take. They're tethered so delicately already; this might have been the very thing to break them. He places a kiss in his wife's hair as she tucks her head between his neck and shoulder, in the spot that seemed to be made just for her.

His hand drifts to the bandages and the pads of his fingers trace the gauze. When Whale opened him up, David is sure the good doctor saw clear lines dividing his heart into three distinct pieces. Each member of his family has an equal share, his or her own corner to stake their claim and call David 'mine.'

He's never thought this more fervently than he does in this moment, with his wife at his side and his daughter and grandson just a call away.

Snow inhales deeply and plays with the string tying his hospital gown together.

"I'm in love with you," she whispers.

"Forever and always," he replies.

Yes, his heart may be divided into three distinct pieces to be scattered wherever his family leads, but his soul – his very soul rests in the hands of Mary Margaret Blanchard.

And he trusts her to protect it for as long as his body draws breath.


End file.
